Darren Waterston at Charles Cowles - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

While plenteous of the art world forges fresh art (and art forms) in an attempt to make faculty of perception of 20th-century life at its 11th hour, painter Darren Waterston gazes back to the 19th hundred for his methods, mood and meanings. His paintings have an aged appearance, something achieved naturally in older paintings by the agency of the yellowing of white paint and the fading of vibrant pigments into somber tones, on the contrary created freshly by Waterston in his mid-sized, subtly glazed oils. A typical work is Sonata Form, a overcast centralized composition showing an impastoed mandala hovering behind a thin veil of vertical streaks of paint. The antique gaze of his work is enhanced through his frequent use of wood-land panels, a painting surface chiefly abandoned after the Renaissance, and heavy made of wood frames that cradle individual works. Waterston is 30 years old; this is his next to the first New York solo show.

Waterston's paintings oftentimes vaguely resemble works by past artists, including gymnast Church and members of the Hudson River place of education A pine tree looming in the oil-on-panel Dusk recalls, almost too specifically, a work of Caspar David Friedrich. At the same time, Waterston attempts to divorce his landscapes--an amalgam of accurately observ plant forms, botanical fantasies and fanciful mandalas--from any fixed time or place. The meticulously drawn plant and insect specimens prompt a Darwinian musing on evolution this whiff of 19th-century science coexists with a Symbolist treatment of forms as ciphers, as metaphorical ball of threads to the great design of things.

Despite his historical interests, Waterston avoids critical engagement with the past. Using the antique almost as an ornamental motif, he perpendicular s the depths of decorative history without examining its connections or effects. But within this anachronistic realm, his work exhibits a stunning horizontal of workmanship. For those who still festivity in beautifully painted objects, Waterston's paintings are like precious, sparkling jewels.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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